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Ed, can you give us the quick history of Oklahoma D-Day?Oklahoma D-DAY started 15 years ago as the bunker army surplus business started to gain speed. Dewayne had always wanted to show respect for his grandfather Enos Armstrong as well as pay homage to those that gave on the beaches of Normandy. He began the game with less than 150 players and the rest of course is history.

What is your roll at D-Day during the year and during the week-long event?As the Director of Operations I am basically responsible for everything that is D-DAY. I am basically an extension of Dewayne when he is not physically present. My job is to try my best to keep it all together throughout the year and monitor every aspect of the event. From the staff to the field it is my job to make sure things are close to getting done. Unfortunately that is an overwhelming task that more times than not makes me paintball most famous bad guy. I am the yes, no person and the one that changes for the event go through. So there is really nothing glamorous about what I have to do. I can say that I have met some of the most amazing people in this sport doing this job and I am thankful everyday that I have had this experience so far. Out of everything I have done in my life I can honestly say that this is the toughest job I have ever had.

Blake, what is the history of the Black Karma Paintball? When did the team form? Who started the team?Black Karma formed the beginnings of our team back in the fall of 2007 with myself and Mike Tyler being two of the original members. The team was born of very traditional roots in northern Alabama –son gets hooked, then gets father hooked, father gets friend hooked, friend gets brother-in law hooked, and so on. We kept meeting up with a trio of guys out of Nashville at every scenario and asked them to join up with us since we were hanging out at every event anyway. We have continued to grow from there with friends, family and players we have met at events along the way.

What are the team goals for this season and beyond?Black Karma’s goal every time we pick up a paintball marker is to have fun. If you’re not having fun, you’re doing something wrong. Also, we strive to play with so much honor and integrity on the field it inspires others to do the same.

Has the team won any awards or honors over the years?Black Karma has been honored to earn several Most Valuable Team Awards, multiple Sportsmanship Awards and many of our teammates have earned Most Valuable Player Awards.

For more than twenty years the Portland, Oregon area has been home to one of the best paintball big games in the world—the SuperGame. Founded in the 1980s by Bob Shano, the SuperGame is one of the longest running paintball events in the world—not just the Northwest. The game is now run (and has been for years) by Dan Bonebrake, an icon in northwest paintball. And the SuperGame is not just another big game. It’s a scenario, big game, night game, party, trade show, festival and all around great time all wrapped up in one giant three-day package.

We arrived at Sniperz Den, the current home of the SuperGame, late Friday afternoon (May 4) after finishing our field and store training class just 15 minutes away (Training.PaintballX3.com). This was my first SuperGame experience and driving onto the property is all I needed to see to know this game was going to live up to the hype. By dinner time on Friday there were already more than 1000 players on site and most of them set up camp for the weekend. They were already gearing up for the three-man tournament and the night game. Just steps from the campsites were the playing fields, the trade show area, food vendors, check-in and just about everything else you’d need for three days of paintball. The atmosphere was alive, the trade show hopping, there was DJ’d music playing, and excitement was building for the two-hour night game that was going to be played in just a few hours.

Every October Paintball Explosion puts on a big game called Clowns vs. Zombies. This big game pits killer clowns against brain-eating zombies to see which team will come out on top. With the sponsorship support of companies like Ninja,

With companies like Planet Eclipse, Valken, Tippmann, FogDoc, and Flurry Industries, and with the number of players that were coming and dressing up for the occasion, this year's event was sure to top the last one! Along with the amazing sponsorship line up, they were able to recruit some famous General's and XO's to lead this year's troops. Leading the clown team was none of their than famed scenario legend Blue Hanse from Blues Crew along with his XO Skeletor from Behind the Bunker. Leading this year's zombie team was Gino Postorivo, CEO and owner of Valken Sports along with his XO yours truly (Rob Leary) from Ninja Paintball.

Season finales are always bitter-sweet. The last events of the PSP, NPPL or Millennium Series are always the best attended of the year with the most on the line—and they are the events that decide which teams win the series rankings titles. It’s also the last get-together for much of the industry and many of the teams and players. And of course the season finales also bring home the reality that the cold winter months are coming in much of the country.

This fourth and last event of the NPPL series for 2012 brought together 76 seven-man teams and five pump teams. In the Pro divisions four teams had a legit shot at winning the title coming into this event—Dynasty, XSV, Infamous and Tampa Bay Damage. Arsenal, Chicago Legend and San Antonio X-Factor were mathematically alive in the title race but it would take a near miracle for one of those three to pull it off.

The fourth event of the PSP season has seen its fair share of venue changes and ups and downs in attendance. It makes sense that the event sandwiched between the very popular and well-attended Chicago and World Cup events would see some drop-off, as teams playing the divisional and less sponsored levels would opt to play those two if that’s all their budgets and time allow. This year’s event was moved away from Top Gun Paintball in south Jersey to OXCC in Maryland, just outside of the Delaware line. If you’ve never been to OXCC it’s one of the true paintball gems on the east coast, with a ton of property, plenty of parking, a pro-shop onsite and more than enough airball fields to host an event of this magnitude. Maybe that’s why this year’s fourth event drew so many teams and players. With 130 teams, 1500 players and 25 vendors, I’ll bet no one in the ranks of the PSP is disappointed with the turnout for this event.

The 2012 PSP Chicago Open took place June 21-24 at Challenge Park Xtreme (CPX) in Joliet, Illinois about thirty minutes from downtown Chicago. Last year the PSP moved the Chicago Open to CPX after years of hosting the third event of the year at various Chicago-area venues, and most recently at Badlandz and Bolingbrook Aquatic Center. Chicago has a very rich professional (and amateur) tournament paintball history that dates back almost to the start of tournament paintball. Lively Productions ran the Windy City Open tournaments in Chicago in the mid and late 1980s and the NPPL and PSP have run dozens of events there since the early 1990s. Suffice to say Chicago is a hotbed for paintball competition and it likely always will be.

The buildup leading to the PSP World Cup is nothing short of amazing every year. For the top teams in each division the PSP season is a year-long journey with the focused goal of winning events and even a season title. For most teams this journey starts in January after a break between the previous year’s World Cup and the year ending holidays—and once that journey begins the breaks are few and far between. For most it’s training during the week and team practices on weekends—and the closer you get to the world Cup, the more intense the training gets.